In an age when celebrity trumps hero, except for a few news cycles when something truly heroic just can’t be ignored (like an airplane in the Hudson River), some of my heroes are single moms. In my work as a pastor I see first-hand the devastation and collateral damage of what we used to describe as broken homes.

Now they’re called dysfunctional families; or simply – families.

As Leo Tolstoy said in the opening line of Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Circumstances vary, contexts are different, and situations are idiosyncratic, but there are some common denominators in families that fall short, all of which have to do somewhat with a failure of human character.

In the church I lead, we have Women’s Ministries, but they are not the garden-variety “churchy” kind. There are no knitting circles, covered-dish luncheons, or Tupperware-like parties. It’s an outreach decidedly focused on troubled homes, divorce recovery, and the unique challenges of single moms. In fact, the lady on my staff who leads this effort is herself a single mother. Her NFL-player hubby defected for some bimbo (or bimbos) far away, leaving her with no money and two wonderful sons. One of her boys has autism.

Her “ex” is a toad (my apology to toads everywhere).

She has a great support system, largely built around her church family. And it demonstrates the surrogacy potential of faith communities as a time-honored refuge. In fact, Jesus himself alluded to how people of faith can step in when biology falls short. In one of his famous seven utterances on the cross he gave instructions to a disciple about guardian-like care for his beloved mother. He knew very well that sometimes blood relatives fumble the ball and others must step in.

So just to be clear, I am not a “single-mom-basher” – quite the contrary. Ann Coulter has taken a lot of heat by devoting a chapter of her recent book, Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America, on the cultural and public policy implications of single motherhood. She draws significant lightning – and not all from liberals – when she says: “The most worshipped figure in modern America is the “single mother.” But is she on to something?

Let me say it again: some single moms are my heroes. But I do not worship single motherhood. It is an inherently challenged situation that does, in fact, create a cultural ripple effect - and not a good one. Coulter has a point – one that is lost on her usual suspect critics who dismiss her as out of her mind. By the way, her book is currently number eight on the New York Times best-seller list, so somebody is buying and presumably reading her prose. I like her books and learned long ago how to “chew the fish and spit out the bones” while reading anything. But I have to confess; I don’t find as many bones to pick in her books as some do.

The problem as I see it is not that some have made poor choices and others have had poor choices done unto them, but rather with the glorification of a form of family that falls short of what children really need.

Can some single moms do it all? Sure. I can give names. And I am sure you can too. But there are vast moral differences between situations where a man has run off and abdicated his clear responsibilities – or never accepted them in the first place – and the idea of seeing single motherhood as a recommended, positive, and “try-it-you’ll-like-it” good. There is also a great ethical chasm between the unmarried woman who has no matrimonial prospects, and has adoptive compassion on children in foster care who have been abused, and someone who wants to be like some Hollywood “shelebrity” doing something chic.

Reasonable people can make such distinctions.

Whatever the case, single motherhood is a hard road, one filled with challenges, and also a measure of peril. Aside from the very well documented societal impact as the number of single moms has nearly quadrupled since 1970, there are some other things all of us should be aware of.

Bob Hamer worked for the FBI for 26 years as a street agent, spending a great deal of time undercover. He’s posed as a drug dealer, obsessive gambler, weapons dealer, and worked against myriad mafias. But his most chilling assignment was when he worked under the radar as a pedophile infiltrating a group called NAMBLA. If that acronym doesn’t ring a bell with you – let me sound it out: North American Man-Boy Love Association.

It’s the ultimate NIMBY; that just might be.

Hamer has written about his experiences and the very dark, sinister, and despicable world of sordid predators who are consumed with twisted and depraved desires for sex with boys – under age boys. Little boys. Pre-teen boys. Teenage boys. The book is entitled, The Last Undercover: The True Story of an FBI Agent’s Dangerous Dance with Evil, and it is a must read. Continued...